Story by Daniel Olinger
Sunday’s game against the New York Liberty did not go very well for Grace Berger and the Indiana Fever, as the former Indiana Hoosier and her team lost 101-83.
Despite her team getting routed by one of the WNBA’s foremost title contenders, Berger built on a career-high performance from last Wednesday.
This Sunday, Berger scored nine points on 3-for-6 shooting, her second-highest point total in the WNBA to date. Additionally, the all-time winningest player in the history of Indiana women’s basketball tallied five assists and four rebounds in her 19 minutes of play.
The Fever have begun to tap in to Berger’s ball handling and creation talents, letting her initiate the offense and direct the team through ball screen actions early in the shot clock.
Having played with Mackenzie Holmes in Bloomington, and now alongside WNBA Rookie of the Year frontrunner Aliyah Boston, Berger has developed incredible precision as a post entry passer.
If a big seals a smaller defender down low, she’s going to find them with a perfect lob over the top, as you can see in the two clips below.
As for the nine points she accumulated on Sunday, the three buckets were a mix of everything Berger does well on the basketball court.
First, she perfectly manipulated a Spain pick-and-roll action, which is one of the most common actions found in modern basketball. It starts with the point guard, in this case Berger, receiving a ball screen, and while the initial ball screener is rolling, she receives a back screen, often to open up a lob pass.
Later on in the game – though it was cut off by the broadcast – Berger drilled a wide open catch-and-shoot three off a baseline out of bounds play. Berger has only attempted 11 three-pointers in 18 games played with the Fever, but she’s drilled five of those 11 attempts, good for a scorching 45.5 three-point shooting percentage in her rookie season.
Berger only attempted 27 threes in 24 games during her senior season at IU, but in a similar vein, she hit 40.7 percent of those attempts.
Berger has always been better as a midrange assassin than as a three-point launcher. Her most impressive bucket from Sunday’s game came when she isolated against the Liberty’s Marine Johannes. Berger set the French guard up with a flurry of crossovers before backing her down in the paint and creating the space she needed for the midrange fadeaway with a perfect shoulder bump.
Very few players have the handle, footwork and shooting touch needed to pull off a self-created bucket like that. Berger is one of them.
None of this even touches on the other subtle yet important benefits she brings to the court.
She points to communicate off-ball switches with her teammates on every possession. She relocates off the ball to maintain proper spacing for her team’s offense and to create open looks for herself. She crashes down into the paint on defense to fight for rebounds despite always being one of the smaller players on the court.
It took half the season, but Berger finally found her stride with the Fever and should be a staple of their rotation moving forward.
The Fever play the Los Angeles Sparks on Tuesday at 10:00 p.m. ET, and the game can be watched on NBA TV or WNBA League Pass.
Additionally, the Fever’s next home game will be played on Sunday, when the Fever host the Seattle Storm and give away free co-branded IU x Fever hats to fans in attendance who purchase tickets at this link here.
Originally posted on msn.com